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For the Love of Pete, Don’t Make These Blogging Blunders in 2022!

If you’re still looking for a good New Year’s resolution for your company, I have a suggestion for you: fix all your blogging blunders.

If you’re writing your own blog, chances are you’re committing at least a couple blogging blunders that are hurting your marketing efforts. A blunder isn’t just a mistake, it’s a mistake that hurts. So every blunder is working against your efforts to generate leads for your sales team.

But the good news is that even the most heinous marketing mistakes are fixable, if you’re willing to commit to the change. To make a resolution.

Let’s take a look at the top seven blogging blunders I see B2B companies making (in no particular order), and how you can resolve to fix them in 2022. Ready? Let’s go!

As long as you’re here: 7 Quick Tips to Boost Your B2B Blog’s Performance

1) Company News

Okay, so let’s just admit it. Your company is super amazing. It is the bomb! You and I are both crazy about your company, and your customers love you too.

But nobody wants to read about your company — especially people who don’t know you well enough to celebrate your latest and greatest achievements. To them, your company news is just puffed up self-congratulatory noise.

When was the last time you went to someone else’s blog just to read about their latest industry award or their CEO’s upcoming trade show appearance? Prospective customers aren’t interested in you, they’re interested in solving their problem. And they want you to be interested in that, too.

Think of it this way: when a guy wants to impress a girl, he’ll never win her heart by talking about his latest trophy. He’ll win her heart by making her the center of his world.

2) Robotic Writing

There are all kinds of reasons to write dry and boring blog articles that read like an academic research paper:

You’re in a boring industry
B2B purchasing decisions are made based on logic and data
You don’t know how to write interesting content
You don’t want more customers

All of those reasons are bad.

You may be in a boring industry, but your brand should never be boring. You may be a B2B company, but your customers are human and emotions drive all human decision making.

Boring content stymies your business growth. Studies have proven it.

Write interesting content that engages your audience’s emotions. Show some personality — at the very least, write conversationally. Tell relevant stories. Be human and relational. Most of all, give your audience emotional reasons — not just data — to choose your company.

3) One Post (from 2019)

I’m going to tell you the same thing I told my kids about raising a guinea pig: it’s a commitment. You can’t get excited about having a blog and then leave it alone. You need to keep feeding it and caring for it and nurturing it so it’ll grow.

(The upside to a blog is, you don’t have to clean a stinky cage.)

When a potential customer goes to your blog page and see that you’ve only posted one or two articles (or that you haven’t posted since last May), they’re going to think a few things:

This company has nothing to say.
They don’t have their act together enough to stay on top of their initiatives.
They flaked out on their own blog — will they flake out on me, too?
They aren’t committed to helping their customers.
Maybe they had to make cutbacks — are they going out of business?

If you can’t commit to your blog, don’t start one. It’s better not to have a blog at all than to stall out and let dust gather on it.

4) Selling, Not Solving

Your customers want to buy, but they don’t want to be sold to. Your blog isn’t a hub for commercials, it’s a hub for solving problems. It’s a resource center containing your best industry insights and most helpful solutions.

My son has an afterschool job at the local hardware store. This is THE place Ann Arborites go to if they have a tricky problem to fix at home. They don’t go to Lowe’s or Menard’s, they go to Stadium Hardware, because they know the guys behind the counter can answer any question they have.

And these guys love — absolutely love — helping their customers. The tougher the problem, the brighter the sparkle in their eyes. And while you’re there, you’re going to get a good dose of personality to go along with that expertise — which, let’s be honest, is part of the reason people go there to begin with.

People are raving fans of Stadium Hardware. Their customers won’t go anywhere else unless they have to. They love the expertise, the personality, and the customer commitment of their staff.

That hardware store? That’s your blog.

5) Short Blog Posts

You don’t have time to write a long, in-depth blog article, but you’ve gotta crank out something, right?

A short blog article is like McDonald’s food — it’s fast and it’s great filler. But aside from that, it doesn’t have much going for it. You can’t establish thought leadership in a mere 300-word post, and you won’t solve customers’ problems in that space.

So you aren’t helping your customers and you aren’t helping yourself. You’re just posting content for the sake of having content. Which means you’re spending time not doing your real work, simply for the sake of doing something that isn’t your real work.

What’s the point of that??

Search engines like blog articles that are long — more than 1,000 words. Anything less than 300 words won’t even get noticed by Google.

Longer blog posts also get shared more and attract more eyeballs. They carry more authority and are considered more helpful, which means you’ll get a larger audience coming back for more!

6) Scattershot Blogging

Okay, so what are you going to write about today? Well, what’s the latest trend in the industry? What was the last conversation you had with a customer? What’s the latest feature you’ve released? These are all great questions to find a blog topic, right?

Well, yes and no.

Those are great questions for generating ideas, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to find the right topic for right now.

Tactical approaches are short sighted. For lasting success with your blog, you need a strategic approach. Start by asking more foundational questions:

What are our sales and business goals for the quarter (or the year)?
Which section of our audience do we need to speak to in order to reach those goals?
What needs or pain points do we need to address?
What content do we already have that addresses those people and those needs?
What gaps do we need to fill?

The answers to those questions will give you the direction you to start building out your content calendar for the quarter.

See the qualitative difference between tactical and strategic?

7) Unformatted Blog Content

This is one of the most basic no-nos in blogging, but I still see it all the time. A blog isn’t like a book, or a newspaper article. In print, you can get away with long sections of unformatted text. Not on the internet.

If you’ve ever spent more than a few minutes online, you know about eye strain. Besides the physical strain, there’s also a psychological one. That wall of digital text makes our brains work harder, and we get drained really easily. We lose interest fast, and don’t do a good job of processing the content we’re reading.

But you can make it easy on your readers by breaking up your text and making it skimmable. Follow these best practices:

Include a gorgeous featured image at the top.
Use short paragraphs. The second paragraph of this section is almost too long.
Break up text into sections with section headings. Use H2 level headings, not H1 (that’s your blog title).
Use bullet lists whenever you have the chance.
Embed relevant images like screen shots in your content, if it makes sense. This breaks up the monotony and gives your eyeballs something interesting to look at.
Embed graphical calls to action in your articles. Same idea as above.

Start a Blogging Resolution!

So there you have it: seven blogging blunders to quit doing now. Which ones do you need to add to your company’s New Year’s resolutions?

By the way, there are way more than seven blunders out there in the interwebs. I guess number eight is thinking that you’re off the hook if you didn’t see your own blunders in this list.